But that's the only solution that our "deciders" will consider.
Ironically, conservatives (at least around here) fiercely oppose tolling. One would think supporters of free markets would want to use a financing method that ensures users bear the cost most directly rather than "redistributing" it to people who aren't using the roads. But their political base is exurban commuters who are quite content to spend other people's money as long as it's on things they use rather than things "those people" use (which are of course, illegitimate "giveaways").
The result is all these Tea Party Republicans complaining about how we need to fund road construction without any more toll roads and without raising the gas tax or any other tax and how we'd be able to pay for it if we weren't wasting money on "giveaway welfare programs to people who sit around having babies and not working."
Proprietary road networks were undermined by the forefathers in the US Constitution. If conservatives believe in a strict interpretation of the US Constitution, why would their support of public roads be shocking? You don't seem to know anything about the conservative platform.
Founding Fathers said we should spend money on defense, post roads (infrastructure/information by modern interpretation), justice, and monetary policy tools. Back in the 50s and 60s, we spent most of our money on military, roads, justice, and monetary policy tools. Things were pretty good back then.
We should have taken another evolutionary step forward as neoliberalism started to gain popularity, and women entered the workforce, but this asshat named LBJ started steering our money towards social programs that were designed to make segregationist Democrats marketable in the South. He also made a laughing stock of the military by handcuffing them in Vietnam. Today, dumb Yankees and Left-Coasters insist that we spend money on everything but productivity. None of them seem to know the idea was conjured up by a racist Texas hayseed with an unhealthy sentimental attachment to the Southern-wing of the Democratic Party. They imagine that FDR, who created an entitlement policy for people who lived beyond average life-expectancy is the founding father of today's social train-wreck.
